Excellent!! This is the 4th pound cake I’ve tried from this site and I’ve finally found a keeper. It’s exactly what a pound cake should be in flavor and texture: dense, moist and rich. I did increase the vanilla to 1.5 tablespoons, used the mace (it gives a nice sublte aroma, but taste wise, you can’t tell it’s there), and when I don’t have sour cream, I’ve subsituted it with plain yogurt (both the lowfat or whole milk works) and decrease the temp to 325. Like other posters, mine baked perfectly at 1 hour 10 min. too. This cake holds up very well, and as long as you keep it covered, it’s stays moist for a good 3 days. Good old fashion ingredients that gives you a classic pound cake. TIP – whip the heck out of the butter/sugar (until very pale and fluffy) and whip even more when combining the eggs. But once you add the flour, fold it in BY HAND ONLY or else you’ll get a tough cake. Also, if your cake is browning too quickly half way through, just lightly cover it with foil. This will be my master pound cake recipe.
To say this is a “moist” pound cake is a misnomer. It is a “butter saturated” pound cake. To discuss using lemon versus mace, no mace, more vanilla, less sugar, more sugar, adding baking powder, etc., isn’t even important. None of it matters unless you reduce the butter in this recipe to 1-1/2 cups. Only then can variations be relevant. Even tho’ as an experienced baker I knew better when I saw 2 cups of butter in this recipe (when most others would call for half that) I foolishly went ahead with this as written anyway, mistakenly assuming 100+ glowing reviews couldn’t be wrong. Live and learn–they were wrong. Before making this, please do check out other pound cake recipes and compare the ratio of butter to flour–you will find this is an extraordinary amount of butter for the amount of flour which will NOT result in the dense, moist, fine crumb so prized in a good pound cake.
I’ve been looking for a moist heavy poundcake and this is it. I did make two small changes. I omitted the mace. I wanted a rich buttery stand alone cake that would marry with berries. Removing the mace gave me what I wanted. I also added a 1/4 tsp of baking powder. The result is a silky cake that’s heavy, but has some air in it. Just perfection.
To Make this Recipe You’Il Need the following ingredients:
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter
- 6 eggs, separated
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1 cup sour cream
- 3 cups all-purpose flour, sift before measuring
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 cups sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Directions
Cream together sugar and butter, add the egg yolks one at time; beat well after each addition. Blend in vanilla, lemon juice and sour cream. Into a separate bowl, sift sifted flour, salt, and soda. Add sifted dry ingredients to batter; beat well. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into the cake batter. Pour into a greased and floured tube or bundt pan and bake at 300° for about 1-1/2 hours or until cake tests done.Cool 10minutes and remove from pan.
